


Dear Camerado: Inmate 78

by Zeke Black (istia)



Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s01e09 Inmate 78, M/M, Old West, POV Chris Larabee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-07
Updated: 2011-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-16 04:02:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,767
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168205
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/Zeke%20Black
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris unwinds among his men on the night of his liberation from the work camp.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dear Camerado: Inmate 78


      
    
       ...Dear camerado! I confess I have urged you onward with me, and still urge you,
          without the least idea what is our destination,
       Or whether we shall be victorious, or utterly quell'd and defeated.
    
            --Walt Whitman, _As I Lay With My Head in Your Lap, Camerado_ , 1866

He took over the Warden's rooms after sending the ghost-pale prisoner who'd been forced to act as batman away to the barracks. Chris was just about to peel off the filthy prison uniform jacket when JD popped in after a quick knock, carrying a bundle of clothes.

"Chris, we found your stuff in a shed with a bunch of other clothing. Well, that helpful guard, Phillips? He took us there. These are yours, right?"

JD held up Chris's white shirt and black pants. He nodded, relieved he wouldn't have to borrow any of the Warden's wardrobe; he didn't want anything that bitching asswipe had worn touching his skin.

"And Buck found your gun in town--oh, he already gave it to you."

His heavy black gunbelt was coiled on the dresser, the silver conchas shining in the light of the lamp and the four candles he'd lit, to go with the fire Vin had set alight for him. He'd had enough of cold and dark for one bitching night.

"Thanks, JD. Everything going okay?"

"Yeah, Josiah and Buck are getting the prisoners settled back in bed for the night, and Vin and Nathan are finishing patching up a couple of guys hurt in the gunfight and another one who got some burns from the fire."

"Nathan? He holding up okay?"

"I'm doing fine." Nathan strode in looking tired, but no more drawn than the rest of them and with alert eyes that looked Chris up and down critically. "How you doing?"

"Thawing out and preparing to get clean, so I'm doing all right. You boys timed your arrival real good."

Nathan and JD both grinned, pleasure and relief mingled equally in their faces. Chris studied their features, breathing in the familiarity of them after the full year the seven of them'd been working together. He'd never been so glad to see a group of men as he had a few hours ago when the night'd erupted in gunfire and he'd realized he suddenly wasn't fighting alone anymore.

Somewhere along the trail through this past year, he'd lost the habit of being alone. Tonight, for the first time, he'd felt strengthened rather than leery of this change.

JD nodded like he was ticking off a mental list. "Okay, I'm gonna go help Ezra get our horses settled. I reckon they'll all need some walking till they calm down. Oh, hey, we found yours! He's okay; they had him in a back corral. Didn't have time to sell him yet."

Some of Chris's remaining tension slid away and he nodded. "Good to hear."

"So, you need anything else, Chris?"

"Nah, I'm fine. Thanks, kid."

As JD left, Chris turned a pointed look on Nathan's arm, where a hint of bulkiness was visible under his jacket sleeve.

"Vin wrap your arm for you?"

"Yup, did a good job. It's fine; just a graze. Still hurts like hell, and bled a bit, but it'll heal up quick."

"Hmm. There's a doctor in the third barracks. He'd look at it for you."

Nathan's eyes lit up. "A real doctor?"

Chris smiled at the sheer happiness on Nathan's face. "Yeah. Kept me alive, anyway. He's all right; did the best he could with what he had, which was pretty much nothing. Watch out, though: he'll likely ask you for whiskey, then just pour a bit on you and drink the rest." He laughed.

Nathan lifted his eyebrows and shook his head. "He must be the owner of the medical bag we found in the store in town, along with your gun. Real nice set of instruments in it; looked well cared for, too."

Chris added it to the tally of things they needed to retrieve from that goddamned town.

"What d'you mean, he kept you alive? Kept you alive how?"

Chris cursed his weariness for his slip; and trust Nathan not to have missed it. He shrugged the annoyance away and pulled off the filthy jacket he'd worn for the past week. He dropped it to the floor, kicking it away from himself, and turned to face Nathan, whose eyes fastened immediately on the raw, bruised, but healing, wound on his lower left side.

Nathan grabbed a candle and leaned over for a close look; his fingers skimmed around the area, ticklish rather than painful, and Chris forced himself to stand patiently so Nathan could reassure himself.

"How'd you get that?" Nathan straightened and frowned at him. "Was it the guards?"

He shook his head. "Ran into some old business among the prisoners, and one of 'em had a makeshift knife."

"'Old business'? What kind of old business?" Buck strode in, widened his eyes at the wound on Chris's side, and put his hands on his hips. "Jeez, Chris, ain't it enough to spend a week wrassling with that slimy Quince and a fucking rattlesnake, plus a rattlesnake of a Warden, from what I been hearing, and some no-account guards on the wrong side of the fence? Old _personal_ business, too?"

"Jackie Pinder," he said, after a moment to remember Buck might recall that incident. "Three cousins of his are in here. They're all right, though; helped me out, at the end."

"Okay, that wound looks like it's healing fine." Nathan put the candle down and stretched his back. "I'm gonna go find that doc you mentioned."

"Name's Simmons."

Nathan nodded. "You need anything, Chris?"

"Nah, I'm good. Get some rest, Nathan."

"Yeah." Nathan tipped him a smile and a finger to his hat, then strode out.

"You know he'll be up all night badgering that doc with questions," Buck laughed as soon as the door shut behind Nathan.

Chris shucked his filthy pants and moved into the bedroom, where the bath sat waiting before the fire with several lamps burning in here, too. He stepped into the tub, groaning at the heat and smell of pure cleanness, and folded his aching body carefully down to sit on the warm metal bottom. For a few moments' of sheer bliss, he just stretched out and let the water lap over his chest and shoulders up to his chin.

"You are one fucking mess, old pard." Buck seated himself on a stool, long legs splayed, leaning forward with intent eyes. "Gotta admit, you scared the Sam Hill out of me this time; first disappearing, then turning up in this shithole. And on top of that, you get yourself knifed--"

Chris opened his eyes and slanted an annoyed look at him. "I'm fine. I'd've been fine; took care of the Warden and was goddamned gonna get myself out of here."

"Yeah, sure, you're always fine! Right up till the day when you ain't."

Chris closed his eyes, deliberately disengaging. "Same for all of us, Buck."

Buck was silent a moment, then gave a gusty sigh and stood up. Chris slitted his eyes open.

"Good you all came, anyway," he said. "Helped. I'm grateful."

"You know I always will--"

"Yeah."

Buck nodded. After a moment's quiet, he slid back into his usual even-natured ease and quirked a smile down at him. "I'm gonna have another look round. Don't let any of the Warden's bedbugs bite your ass. They're probably clap-ridden."

He left with a chuckle on Chris's snort. Chris had a whole ten minutes to sit himself up and wash with a sweet-scented soap and a soft back brush. He ducked his head under the water and washed his hair, and was sluicing off the suds when he heard the ring of familiar spurs in the other room.

Vin knocked quietly at the half-open bedroom door and came in on Chris's rasped, "Yeah."

"How's it going?" he asked, pushing himself up to his feet.

Vin leaned over and grabbed the big, fluffy towel sitting on a nearby chair, tossing it to him after a startled look down at its thickness in his hands. Chris rubbed it over his chest, enjoying its softness even while despising the filthy decadence of a man who could surround himself with luxuries while treating men like less than animals.

"We could do with some of these in the bath house." He swiped it under his arms and down his sides before stepping out of the tub onto the warm rug.

"Nah, we'd never get Ezra out of there then."

Chris grinned and pulled on his pants as Vin wandered around the room picking up doodads and oddments strewn about. Some had a use, but most were just decorative; shiny silver, inlaid woods. The whole lot was probably stolen.

"Magpie." Vin dropped a fancy brass egg cup onto the table in the corner and turned away with a disgusted look.

"Yeah." Chris allowed himself a surge of fierce elation. "But at least he's now a dead magpie."

Vin threw himself into an embroidered armchair with carved wooden arms and smiled with matching fierceness. "He is that. Got exactly the snake's death he deserved, too."

Chris went into the front room and picked at the food the prisoner-servant had left. Vin sat with him and folded a slice of roast beef and a wedge of cheese between a couple sides of bread. Chris felt sour thinking of the slop the prisoners ate, but a pickled egg hit his desire for salt and made his appetite keen, and he made himself a sandwich of his own. He basked in Vin's quiet, reassuring presence as they attended to their guts. Vin finished before him and talked quietly about what had been happening in Four Corners while he was gone--not much, the highlight apparently being a passel of Scandinavian drovers with little English but impressive drinking habits who'd lingered a couple of days on their way north with a herd.

Vin smiled when Chris laughed at the tale of their antics, which he reckoned was exactly Vin's plan all along.

Vin got up after that, hooking his thumbs into his gunbelt. "I'm gonna go talk with Phillips some more. The man's all right. Some of them guards need to be weeded out, and he's got the lay of them."

Chris nodded and looked up at him, standing haloed in lamplight. Vin gave him a warm feeling just like the others, but special to himself like each of them, this unlikely bunch he'd fallen in with. He didn't need to tell Vin outright he'd been glad they'd come, though; that was the difference with Vin. He just looked at Vin and nodded.

Vin's eyes crinkled in silent acknowledgment, then he tipped his hat. "See ya in the morning, Chris." He turned and left, spurs clinking with his long strides, out the door till they fell silent.

Chris had finished eating and was settled down with one of the Warden's expensive cigars when Josiah came in carrying a sheaf of papers.

"Got 'em out of the safe in his office," Josiah said. "Need to separate out the real prisoners from the innocent men they trapped here."

Josiah sat at the other side of the small, round table. Chris shoved the humidor to him and Josiah broke off reading to peer inside. Josiah gave Chris one of his toothy grins and plucked up a cigar. He rolled it under his nose before biting off the end and spitting it onto the fancy carpet. Chris flipped him a match and Josiah, heedless of the fragility of the little side table, fired it on the underside and lit up. He drew the smoke deep into his lungs and sighed out a smoky gust of pleasure.

They smoked in harmony for a couple of minutes, then Josiah pulled out his big flask and put it on the table between them. Chris bobbed his head in thanks and took a long swallow. Josiah always carried damned fine liquor.

"Phillips estimates maybe fifty-five percent of the prisoners belong here lawfully, which leaves an awful lot of innocent folk caught up in this noose."

"Yeah, they had it running damned slick."

"Even Quince's mother was in on it, while claiming to be a good, Christian woman." Josiah gave a grunt of disgust much like Vin's over the Warden's doodads and went back to poring over the papers.

Chris shrugged. "Well, she's lost her son, now, so I reckon that's the worst punishment she could get." He felt loose and relaxed, almost content, in a bizarre way. The thought of the six reliable men, his people, spread through the camp, overseeing everything, ordering matters the way they needed to be, gave him another bolt of that shivery sense of triumphant strength.

Josiah met his eyes soberly. "Greed and selfishness lead people down dark avenues. There was one hell of a lot of greed and selfishness here."

Josiah pushed to his feet and gathered the papers. Chris looked up at him, noting how Josiah's gray hair had the dull shine of pewter in the muted light.

"You need anything, Chris?"

Chris shook his head. "Thanks, Josiah." He spoke quietly, intensely; then eased the moment by lifting the flask with a quirk of his lips, keeping firm hold of it.

Josiah gave him another grin, a nod, and left.

Chris took a few mouthfuls of the whiskey, but stopped then, just sitting relaxed with his hand cupped on the curved metal comfortingly. He was too tired for more; he'd be flat on his face in no time. He was ready to sleep soon; and he knew he'd sleep well in the Warden's feather bed and clean sheets while the bastard's bloated body lay in the dirt.

He started awake from a doze at the table when Ezra burst in, mouth blazing like shooting stars. As usual.

"If Buck tells me just _one more time_ that I don't know you as well as he does, I will not be responsible for my actions." Ezra stared down at him. "I am just warning you."

"All right." He blinked up at Ezra, amusement already curling in his belly. "But don't expect me to--"

"Curb our impetuous beast. Yes, I know he's a force unto himself, and his annoying me is far too minor a matter for you to exercise your ferocious-- Oh!"

Ezra plucked Josiah's flask from between Chris's lax fingers, pulled the stopper, and sniffed. "Ahhh." He drank deeply, head thrown back; Chris leaned his own head back and watched the flex of Ezra's throat muscles, the bob of his Adam's apple, the clean lines of his stubbled cheeks as they hollowed.

Ezra always carried excellent stock himself in his own flask on the trail, but he was never one to pass up a chance to feast at someone else's expense. Chris's amusement notched up even higher when Ezra settled into a chair with the flask, but pulled his own out and slid it between Chris's fingers in what passed for a downright tender exchange, for Ezra and his chintzy ways.

"I'm sleeping here tonight, by the way." Ezra was looking around the room with narrowed, calculating eyes.

Chris raised an eyebrow. "You're sleeping here?"

"Of course. Your parade of courtiers has already trooped through to check on your well-being, correct? I doubt any of them--even mama-bear Buck--will bother you again tonight, especially after the lights are turned out. I have no intention whatsoever of sleeping in any of those vermin-ridden barracks, and the guards' quarters aren't much better. And it's cold out there." He craned his head to the side to look into the bedroom. "The Warden of this olfactory hellhole might well have been a cretinous pig, but at least he appears to have exercised a degree of good sense in the matter of worldly comforts."

He turned a merry look on Chris and doffed Josiah's flask at him. "Why should you be the only one to benefit?"

Chris laughed, inevitable as sin with Ezra. "Why, indeed," he murmured, and let his eyes fall to half-mast, watching Ezra's eyes widen in response and a smile imprint dimples on his cheeks.

"And there I thought you'd be too tired for anything but sleep." Ezra dipped his own chin to his chest and looked up at him from under his lashes.

He was, actually, he acknowledged silently; though if anyone could make a dead man sit up and take muster, it was Ezra in lamplight with his face relaxed from its usual public caution. He thought idly, not for the first time, of the oddness in the way Vin became more Vin in private, still wholly himself but more intensely so, while Ezra became someone else entirely. Other folk tended to fall between the extremes, which he'd never cottoned to till he'd met these two and seen them side-by-side.

He pushed himself to his feet with a groan he didn't bother trying to hide, gathered his gunbelt, and went into the bedroom. He'd be asleep in a few minutes, Ezra's voice washing over him like raindrops, and he'd be stiff and crinkled as a washing-board come morning if he didn't get himself lying flat first.

It took him only a moment to shuck his pants and slide between the Warden's smooth sheets into the deep give of a feather mattress and the scent of-- Christ! Was that lavender? He scrabbled under the thick pillow and pulled out a satin bag tied with a ribbon; it crackled when he squeezed it and gave off an even stronger scent of crushed lavender. He stared at it bemused, then lobbed it across the room. Ezra paused in hanging his gunbelt on the other bedpost and rolled his eyes, then attended to his many fiddly buttons as Chris settled in for the show.

Watching Ezra skin himself of his colorful layers was one of the strange pleasures of this new and unexpected life he'd found when he'd followed Buck's trail to Four Corners and ended up staying long beyond the thirty days he'd agreed to, which in itself'd been a longer chunk of his time in one spot than he'd spent for going on three years. Thirty days had become two months, and two months had become six, and suddenly he was looking at having stayed put for an entire year without ever consciously deciding if he was going or staying. He still hadn't made that decision, but this break he'd taken, ending with these men coming for him instead of him doing it all alone, made his recent sense of Four Corners as a temporary home, rather than a stopover, seem less perilous.

And, increasingly, the days in that new home ended like this, lying relaxed in bed watching Ezra peel away his layers and the face he wore for the outside world with them. Even in private, Ezra liked attention; he enjoyed being watched, the showman in him not one of the bits he ever shed. _Mother bought me a hand-held mirror when I was eight,_ he'd said once. _Odd gift for a child, but she said it was never too soon to become aware of always having an audience, even if that audience was just oneself._ He'd worn that half-indulgent, half-wry smile he usually wore when thinking of Maude, but Chris had thought of a little boy playing cowboys and injuns with a tomahawk in hand in public and a beauty mirror in private to study his performances.

Ezra must've seemed like an ordinary enough youngster to most folks in the light of day while, even back then, he was becoming something out of the ordinary in secret.

With Chris's heated gaze on him now, Ezra's gracefulness became a dance of movement, hands skimming over his clothes to the rhythmic cadence of his own voice, fine-grained skin flashing in the single lamp left burning as he stroked down his sides to push off his pants, skimmed over the bare flesh of his arms as it appeared, encircled his fingers as he removed his rings, the little bits of wealth he displayed to attract the unwary into thinking he was something he wasn't. At times like this, Chris amused himself with the notion of Ezra's being the love brat of Maude and P. T. Barnum.

Ezra's cock was half-hard when he turned down the lamp and slid into bed beside Chris, but he fit himself against Chris's side with hands more soothing than inflaming.

"You really are too tired, aren't you? Heaven forbid you actually admit you and your prodigious sexual ability require rest like a normal human being."

"My prodigious sexual ability requires rest." He said it puppet-like to hear Ezra's laugh in his ear and turned his head to nose among the soft hair at Ezra's temple.

Ezra's prissy pomade made his nose twitch as always, but in a good way, the way Ezra's hand sliding over his ribs--carefully above the wound he knew Ezra had noted, though hadn't mentioned--felt; solid and familiar as his gun on his hip, his horse beneath him.

Ezra pulled him close, with that unexpected strength he had, deceptive as the rest of him, and Chris relaxed into his hold like sinking into a sun-warmed sand dune on the Californio coast. Tomorrow, or perhaps the next day, they'd head...home. He and these six men; he'd left alone, but would be going back in a group.

"So, I trust you were heading back to Four Corners when you were waylaid here?"

The neutral tone in Ezra's normally emotion-laden voice woke him from a doze. He blinked into the dark for a moment till he got what Ezra was actually asking.

"Yeah. I was coming back."

He felt Ezra relax like a silent sigh of relief. Ezra wouldn't say anything else; like him, Ezra could be content with the good a single day brought, when he had to be. Not that Ezra would shut his pan, of course. Somehow, over these past months, he'd gotten used to falling asleep to the sound of Ezra's voice, and missed it in the deep silence of nights when he was alone. So when Ezra said:

"By the way, I understand the Warden and Quince had a scheme in which they invited their victims to contact family and friends for bail money. Yet, funnily enough, Chris, we never heard a word...."

He grinned to himself in the dark, snuffled in Ezra's scent one more time, and slid into sleep.


End file.
